Reinhard Heydrich, son of the director of the Music Conservatory of Halle (Germany), is regarded by his masters and his comrades as an extraordinarily brilliant subject. The defeat of 1918 upset Heydrich, raised by his parents and his masters in a fiercely nationalist spirit. In 1922, he left Halle (Germany) to present himself in Kiel (Germany) as a naval aspirant. He easily passes the ranks: second-class shipboard (1924), lieutenant (1928). In 1930 he became a member of the staff of the Admiral-Commandant in Kiel as a communications officer at the intelligence service (Nachrichtenmitteloffizier). He was expelled from the navy in April 1931 for "cause of unworthiness": he refused to marry a young girl who was pregnant with his works ... On July 14, 1931, Heydrich entered the SS, the black body, as simple SS, but he quickly climbed all levels of the hierarchy: on March 31, 1933, at the age of 29, he was Oberführer (title between colonel and general). 
The SS Reichsführer, Heinrich Himmler, commissioned him to set up a specifically SS intelligence service. Heydrich will take care of this work which he will carry out, beyond all expectations, with uncommon enthusiasm and intelligence. He founded the SD (Sicherheitsdienst: Security Intelligence Service).
Heydrich's ambitions are limitless. As early as 1931, he was convinced that sooner or later Hitler would assume power. This is why he deliberately creates - almost without Himmler's knowledge - within the SS itself an organization of its own to double and, if necessary, replace all the apparatus of government; It thus begins the constitution of a State in the State. It leaves to others the ideological debates, the ritual searches to serve the blood myth and the formation of SS military units. Above all, Heydrich believes that the SS must be ready at any moment to take over the exercise of power. Unfortunately, the strength of the SS is still very meager and, above all, the intellectual value of the average SS is very low!
Heydrich starts recruiting for his SD young people gifted and able to execute his orders with energy, audacity and efficiency. In a short time, the SD becomes the meeting place of the young National-Socialist intellectual elite. All of its members will reach the highest positions in the years following Hitler's seizure of power.
Until the Nazis seized power in 1933, the SD of Heydrich concentrated on collecting information about the Nazi adversaries, while closely monitoring the activities of the party leaders themselves and , Especially at the personal request of Hitler, that of Röhm and the heads of the SA. After January 30, 1933, the SD amplifies its action. Himmler thus defined his role:
"The SD unmasked the opponents of the national-socialist idea and thus directed the action of the police".
Because the executive side is reserved strictly for the police. Unwilling to be confined to the role of deputies of the Gestapo, the heads of the organization set a higher goal:
"The SD will be a police of the mind, the instrument of measurement and control of thought."
However, if the SD leaders were intellectuals, the action groups were made up of blind executants for whom the death of a man did not count. Little by little, Heydrich - in the shadow of Himmler - became the most formidable man of the Third Reich, master of all police, espionage and Gestapo. In 1942 he was appointed successor to von Neurath, the protector of Bohemia and Moravia, and he led a repressive and paternalistic policy in these regions, significantly improving the lot of the peasant and working people (neglected since 1919 for the benefit of the bourgeoisie) . Two Czech soldiers, trained in London, were parachuted into Czechoslovakia with the mission of assassinating Heydrich. They succeed in their mission and this attack is a pretext for a particularly fierce German repression: the village of Lidice (Czechoslovakia), for example, is wiped off the map.
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